F/T Position Available:
Researcher on Women’s Human Rights and Religion Women’s Rights Division
Deadline for applications: March 12, 2007
Human Rights Watch is seeking highly-qualified applicants for its newly-created position of Researcher on Women’s Human Rights and Religion.
Description: The Researcher in this newly-created position for Human Rights Watch’s Women’s Rights Division will be responsible for developing and implementing a research and advocacy agenda focusing on how interpretations of religion (and religious law, including but not limited to sharia) affect women’s human rights. A primary objective of the research and advocacy will be to curb violations through, among other things, conducting fact-finding missions; writing and publicizing reports, briefing papers, letters, press releases, op-eds, and submissions to international bodies based on the findings; developing and implementing local, regional, and international strategies to change abusive laws, policies, and practices; presenting human rights concerns to government officials, religious leaders, inter-governmental agencies, and the press; and working closely with colleague NGOs to ensure that HRW’s work complements and enhances their own work. The Researcher’s responsibilities will also include monitoring legislative and/or policy developments related to the ways in which religious laws are interpreted and/or applied in violation of women’s human rights globally and liaising with human rights, women’s, religious, and other organizations in the countries she or he will cover.
Qualifications: The ideal candidate will have religious expertise and no less than five years
of directly-related post-graduate experience working on exposing and curbing the ways that religions have been used to undermine and circumscribe women’s enjoyment and exercise of their full human rights, both at a national and a regional level. An advanced (graduate) degree in international relations, religious studies, theology, journalism, law, or social sciences is required, as are strong field research and documentation skills. Fluency in both written and spoken Arabic and English, as well as strong familiarity with Islam, sharia and international human rights law, is required.
The researcher must be able to identify, research, analyze and effectively communicate
important human rights developments in the area of specialty in a timely and sophisticated fashion, setting priorities based on perceptive analysis of critical emerging issues that are important and susceptible to influence. The researcher must be an agile and productive writer and dynamic speaker with accurate, analytically sophisticated, and persuasive oral and written communications skills. He or she must be able to think strategically about the global and local media environments and how to use the press and electronic media to further advocacy goals, maintaining regular contact with key local, national and international contacts relevant to the researcher’s issues. He or she must be able to develop and implement realistic and effective local and international advocacy strategies and tactics in order to identify and seize advocacy opportunities and thus insert HRW’s position into public debate. Creativity, initiative, perseverance, and flexibility are required while maintaining HRW’s high methodological standards.
He or she must be able to travel domestically and overseas for three or more weeks at a time, several times a year. The researcher may be based in one of HRW’s global offices or in another location, but in any case must be prepared to spend significant periods of time in HRW’s New York headquarters, particularly in the first year of employment for purposes of orientation, integration into the organization, and training, and thereafter for regular consultation.
Salary and Benefits: Human Rights Watch seeks exceptional candidates and offers competitive compensation and generous employer-paid benefits. HRW will pay reasonable relocation expenses and will assist employees in obtaining the necessary work authorization for the location where he or she will be based.
PLEASE APPLY IMMEDIATELY by emailing in a single submission: a letter of interest describing your experience, your resume, names or letters of reference, and a brief writing sample (unedited by others) no later than March 12, 2007 to wrd@hrw.org. Please use “Application for WRD Researcher on Women’s Human Rights and Religion” as the subject of your email. Only complete applications will be reviewed. It is preferred that all materials be submitted via email. If emailing is not possible, send materials (please do not split a submission between email and regular post) to:
Human Rights Watch
Attn: Search Committee (WRD Researcher on Women’s Human Rights and Religion)
350 Fifth Avenue, 34th Floor
New York, NY 10118-3299 USA
Human Rights Watch is an equal opportunity employer which does not discriminate in its
hiring practices and, in order to build the strongest possible workforce, actively seeks a
diverse applicant pool.
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